The Laughing Jesus by Timothy Freke

Author:Timothy Freke
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307238337
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2005-07-11T20:00:00+00:00

Knowing Now

How can we check out the notion that life is a dream? Dreams exist only in the moment they are being dreamt. To discover if life is a dream, therefore, we need to investigate our experience of the present moment. This is the secret of waking up. Gnosticism is an investigation of the now. To experience gnosis you need to examine this moment closely and understand it in a remarkable new way.

Focus your attention on your experience of this moment. What is different about this present moment from every other moment you have experienced or will experience? There are, of course, an infinite number of things which make each moment unique, but there is something obviously different about the now. The present moment exists. The past has gone and the future is only a possibility, but the present is a reality you are actually experiencing. To understand existence you must pay attention to what exists and examine this moment.

The word gnosis is usually translated as ‘knowledge’, but it is better to think of it as a state of knowing. Gnosis is not information like the ‘knowledge’ you picked up at school. Gnosis is not a theory about life which you can learn. Gnosis is a state of awakening that arises when you examine the present moment and become conscious of what you are actually knowing right now.

Most of the things we claim to know are actually just opinions which we believe. To experience gnosis we need to differentiate believing from knowing. It is possible to doubt all our beliefs, but what we are knowing is self-evidently certain in the moment. We don’t have to give up our opinions to experience gnosis. They may be useful, beautiful, valid opinions. But we do need to discriminate them from what we actually are knowing now.

Literalism is based on the belief that history can save us. The basic teaching of Literalist Christianity, for example, is that if you believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus you will go to Heaven when you die. But although it is possible to believe passionately that Jesus died and resurrected for our sins, as millions do, it is impossible to know this, because it is not happening right now. And all we actually know is the now. Gnosticism is rooted firmly in the reality of this present moment. It doesn’t teach that history can save you. Rather, it suggests that history is the problem. History is a story we tell about the past to explain the present. The problem is that when we are busy believing that we know what is going on, we never really stand back from our opinions to look at realty with an open mind, so we become unconsciously engrossed in the life-dream and don’t wake up.

Make no mistake about it, all the ideas about history that we have previously explored in this book have nothing to do with gnosis. They are just opinions about the past. Good, well-evidenced opinions, but opinions nevertheless.

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